"Cumly, _July 10, 19--_.
"Dear Captain Blair,
"I'm in a grumbly mood this morning. Do you mind? Something annoyed me
yesterday, and this is the lachrymose aftermath. I'm sorry, for your
sake as well as my own, for it's mail day, and it's now or never to
catch that birthday! Perhaps a morning's writing will work it `off'
better than any other distraction which this place affords. It's easy
for you away at the other side of the world to sentimentalise over my
`Cranford' home, but if I had been asked to state the spot of all others
in which I would _not_ choose to live, it would be just such a derelict
little hamlet as that in which fate has dumped me. It's a pretty little
place, built on the side of a hill, with a precipitous High Street which
is dangerous to drive down, and puffy to walk up. There is a church at
the top, a chapel at the bottom, and a bank half-way; likewise a linen
draper's shop, which serves the purpose of a lady's club, for no
self-respecting woman allows a morning to pass without popping in at
`Verney's.' If the stock does not supply what one wants (it rarely
does!) there is always `a startling line' in something else, and a smell
of flannel thrown in. `We are out of white gloves this morning, but I
have a very fine line in unbleached calico!' Mr Verney is a deacon of
the chapel; Mrs Verney was in the millinery, and has hankerings after
the church. We notice a general tendency among the maidens of dissent
to appear at the parish church, what time they possess new garments or
hats... After we have bought our packets of needles, or a box of pins,
we meet our friends in the front shop, and gossip. Such a lot of talk,
about such little, little things! There are days when it's amusing
enough; days when it's the driest dust. Last year a friend of mine
started a `Thankfulness Society,' as a cure for the grumbling and
discontent which is apt to engulf spinsters in a country place. Each
member was presented with a little book, and was bound to inscribe
therein the special causes of thankfulness which had occurred during
each day. I refused to join. I said if I ceased to grumble it would
have a demoralising effect on my character. No use to grumble?
Fiddlesticks! _Every_ use! As a dear old American friend used to say:
`When you feel like scratching, it's not a mite of use rolling your
eyes, and trying to be a saint--just let yourself go, and be right down
_ugly_ for a few minutes, and it will be a heap better for you, and
every one concerned!' The secretary was shocked. She said if one
realised one's blessings, one would not _wish_ to grumble... I said
that considered as a trial the grumbler was not in it, compared with the
persistent optimist. Nothing on earth is more embittering than to live
with a persistently amiable person. Imagine living with a certificated
optimist bound over to be thankful through thick and thin, when the soot
falls, the soup is singed, and the new dress does _not_ come home! ...
Imagine the conversation, the maddening serenity of the smile!
Optimists are admirable in calamity, but in the simple aggravations of
daily life they are just the most depressing creatures upon earth!
"Well, I'm sorry! Now I've had my growl, and (Yankee again!) feel as
`good as pie,' You might as well know what a grumbling, discontented
wretch I am, and if you ask me why this special fit attacked me just
this special morning, well, I _know_, but I'm not going to tell. I'll
answer another question instead--
"You ask me what I think about love, getting engaged, married, all the
rest of it. I am only a looker on, and must always be, but it _does_
interest me all the same! I have marvelled with every one else over the
nature of that indefinable something which draws two people together,
and which has nothing on earth to do with suitability as understood by
the people. John may be a model of excellence; amiable, rich, handsome,
devoted, but on their first meeting it is settled in Louisa's mind as
irrevocably as the trump of doom that he would never _do_! She knew it
at a flash, the moment he entered the room; the second he touched her
hand. And Tom is poor; he is plain, he looks as though on occasion he
might be abominably disagreeable. Louisa looks upon his cross face, and
acknowledges to herself `My Lord and King!'--It's a _feel_ that decides
it, not a fact. In the great, big choice of life, reason doesn't count.
Two men have asked me to marry them (You wouldn't know their names,
even if you heard them, so I am betraying no confidence); I should have
said `no' in any case, but I might have _wanted_ to say `yes'! I
didn't! I felt that as a choice a jump into the river would be
preferable, yet from a sane, sensible point of view there was no reason
why I should not have fallen in love--and--especially in one case! every
obvious reason why I _should_! I couldn't for my life tell you what was
wrong, except--_Everything_! I should have hated his very virtues by my
own fireside. His `little _ways_' would have driven me daft, but I can
imagine wrapping up those self-same little ways right in the middle of
my heart, as the dearest things, the sweetest, the most winsome, if they
had belonged to another man!
"Engaged people are a bore to outsiders, but for themselves it must be a
good time. To be able to speak out, after bottling it all in; to be
left alone in peace, instead of living on odd snatches of conversation
in the midst of crowds; to feel _sure_; to be done with `I',--and become
for ever `We.'--It must feel so warm, and restful, and rich! It isn't
so much the mere happiness that impresses me; it's the _rest_. I wish
it were possible to get engaged without being married, then I should
arrange it with indecent haste, with an orphan, with a motor car, and we
_would_ be happy! He should be clean shaven, and rather plain, but it
must be just my special fad in the way of plainness--a trim, slim,
sinewy sort. Nothing flabby, an' you love me!
"I've thought of his name sometimes; names count for a good deal. There
are moods when I dream of Ralph and feel a fascination for Peter; moods
when I have a secret hankering for Guy; moods again when he could not
possibly be any one but Jack. People say that if you really love a man,
his name does not matter. I've known a woman to settle down with
`Percy,' and live happily ever after. I've heard of another who
espoused a `Samuel,' and was apparently content. It is conceivable that
I might do the same, but `Alfred' gives me a crawl. It is settled,
firm, as the everlasting hills, that I can never belong to Alfred!
"If there is one thing more than another for which I bless my parents,
and praise them in the gate, it is that they called me by a durable
Christian name. Katherine! It is not beautiful; it is not poetic, but
it is at least seemly and discreet. You may take liberties with
Katherine, and it will never disgrace you. When you are small and
curly-headed you can pose as `Kitty Clover' with beguiling effect. I
did myself, for quite a long run. Later on, dropping the Clover, you
may be known to schoolmates as Kitty or Kate. There's a snap about Kate
which keeps Pearls and Rubies in their place. Katrine is, as you
observe, quite attractive for the days of youth; Katherine is a refuge
for old age. Can you imagine anything more appropriate for a spinster
lady in a country town?
"The only married couple whom I have studied from the _inside_ was my
brother and his wife during that little six months. It seemed quite a
perfect thing at the time, but looking back from the sober height of
twenty-six, it seems more like a play, than real, serious life. She was
only nineteen; a pretty thing; such a babe; poor little, happy Juliet!
and Martin was a boy with her. Now, as you say, he is a man. I wonder
sometimes--
"We have a visitor staying with us just now. Her name is Grizel Dundas,
and she is twenty-eight, and very beautiful or rather plain, according
to the hour of the day, and her own mood and intention. Sometimes I
suspect that she deliberately _makes_ herself plain, for the fun of
confounding people with her beauty an hour later on. Also she may
probably turn out to be one of the greatest heiresses in London, or be
left with a few hundreds a year, and she is very lazy, and very
energetic, and talks like a schoolboy, and looks like a fay, and
dresses, oh, Lonely Man! in the most ra-vishing clothes! And she knocks
at the door of Martin's study in his writing hours, and walks bang in.
_And he doesn't turn her out_!
"That's Grizel. And if I tried a hundred years I couldn't describe her
better. We were at school together, and she is my most intimate friend,
next to Dorothea, but--
"I wish I were a generous, humble-minded person who _liked_ standing
aside, and seeing other people succeed where I have failed, and being
praised where I'm snubbed, and run after when I'm ignored, but I'm not,
and if you think I am, you'd better know once for all that you're
mistaken. There have been times this last week when I've _hated_
Grizel, and her works!
"Yesterday we went to a garden party, she, Martin, and I, and they
schemed to send me off with a snuffy old man, so that they could be
alone. I saw them look at each other, a quick, signalling look, which
meant, `_Get rid of her_!' and he was the first person who came along.
Poor, snuffy person, with a termagant on his hands! If you were sitting
here, face to face--I should be too proud to tell you this; even to
write it to Dorothea would hurt, but to a ghostly shape whom one has
never seen, and probably never shall see, it is a relief to blurt out
one's woes!
"Martin looks at Grizel with a look in his eyes which,--which is _not_
like a sorrowing widower! and when I see it I am filled with seventeen
contending emotions, like the heroines in the newspaper _feuilletons_.
Jealousy--hideous, aching jealousy, for Juliet, and the past, for myself
and the future; disillusionment, in the breaking of an ideal, which, if
impracticable, was still beautiful and sweet, the illusion of a lifelong
loyalty and devotion; also, and this is worst of all,--something
horribly approaching contempt! My love for Martin is as great as ever,
but he is no longer the hero, the strong, silent man who loved once and
for ever, and went through life waiting patiently for a reunion. He has
stepped down from his pedestal and become flesh and blood, and I--oh,
Lonely Man!--I am _trying_ to be glad, but it's a big, big effort! Self
looms so large; the self that _will_ intrude into every question. I
wanted him to be happy, _but in my own way_!
"I'm going to stop this minute. You'll be horrified at the length of
this budget, but it's your own fault. Give a woman an inch, and she'll
take an ell. Wade through it this time, and tell me what you think, but
don't _preach_! Preaching does me such a lot of harm. Methinks I
descry in you a latent tendency to preach; nevertheless, somehow--I
can't think how--you've comforted me to-day and so I'm grateful.
"Many happy returns of your twenty-fifth birthday. I am a year older,
and feel pleasantly superior.
"Yours sincerely,
"Katrine Beverley.
"PS.--Please go on about `The girl you would fancy' ... I have a fancy
to hear!"